An interview with Planned Parenthood's Director of Marketing...

CHICAGO (AP) — One of the most liberal members of the U.S.Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be expected to give a rousing defense of Roe v. Wade in reflecting on the landmark vote 40 years after it established a nationwide right to abortion.

Instead, Ginsburg told an audience Saturday at the University of Chicago Law School that while she supports a woman's right to choose, she feels the ruling by her predecessors on the court was too sweeping and gave abortion opponents a symbol to target. Ever since, she said, the momentum has been on the other side, with anger over Roe fueling a state-by-state campaign that has placed more restrictions on abortion.

"That was my concern, that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly," she told a crowd of students. "... My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change."

The ruling is also a disappointment to a degree, Ginsburg said, because it was not argued in weighty terms of advancing women's rights. Rather, the Roe opinion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, centered on the right to privacy and asserted that it extended to a woman's decision on whether to end a pregnancy.

Four decades later, abortion is one of the most polarizing issues in American life, and anti-abortion activists have pushed legislation at the state level in an effort to scale back the 1973 decision.

Ginsburg would have rather seen the justices make a narrower decision that struck down only the Texas law that brought the matter before the court. That law allowed abortions only to save a mother's life.

A more restrained judgment would have sent a message while allowing momentum to build at a time when a number of states were expanding abortion rights, she said. She added that it might also have denied opponents the argument that abortion rights resulted from an undemocratic process in the decision by "unelected old men."

Ginsburg told the students she prefers what she termed "judicial restraint" and argued that such an approach can be more effective than expansive, aggressive decisions.

"The court can put its stamp of approval on the side of change and let that change develop in the political process," she said.

A similar dynamic is playing out over gay marriage and the speculation over how the Supreme Court might act on that issue.

The court decided in December to take up cases on California's constitutional ban on gay marriage and a federal law that denies to gay Americans who are legally married the favorable tax treatment and a range of health and pension benefits otherwise available to married couples.

Among the questions now is whether the justices will set a nationwide rule that could lead to the overturning of laws in more than three dozen states that currently do not allow same-sex marriage. Even some supporters of gay marriage fear that a broad ruling could put the court ahead of the nation on a hot-button social issue and provoke a backlash similar to the one that has fueled the anti-abortion movement in the years following Roe.

The court could also decide to uphold California's ban — an outcome that would not affect the District of Columbia and the 11 states that allow gay marriage.

Ginsburg did not address the pending gay marriage cases.

Asked about the continuing challenges to abortion rights, Ginsburg said that in her view Roe's legacy will ultimately hold up.

"It's not going to matter that much," she said. "Take the worst-case scenario ... suppose the decision were overruled; you would have a number of states that will never go back to the way it was."

If you really think about what she said, you'll spit your coffee.

1) She apparently has no regrets about the killing of 50 million children because of Roe v Wade. Roe was just a bad 'tactic'. It's hasn't made things easier for abortionists. Sniff.

2) Ginsburg's job is not to parse "tactics" in order to hawk abortions. She is a Supreme Court justice, not director of marketing for Planned Parenthood. Her job is to objectively interpret the Constitution and uphold the law.

Note that she made no assertion that Roe was rightly (or wrongly) decided, as a matter of law, which is the only matter that is any of her professional business. Is she admitting that Roe was a Constitutional joke, unfounded in any logic or law? Is she admitting that it was a tactical ruling, albeit imprudent?

What do tactics, rather than law, matter to a Supreme Court justice? If Roe was a Constitutionally sound decision (I know... I know... stay with me...), why is its tactical value of interest to her? Should it have been decided differently for tactical, not legal, reasons?

What does that say about the integrity of the Court's deliberative process, when tactics, not law, are the concern of justices?

The abortion issue before the Supreme Court is whether states have the legal authority under the Constitution to regulate abortion, not whether access to abortion is good or bad or whether guaranteeing or denying that access is wise or foolish. The wisdom and tactics of abortion is a decision for legislators, not justices.

Ginsburg makes my skin crawl. The more you get to know these abortion-mongering bastards, the more amoral and reptilian they seem.

Being married to a lawyer quite naturally brings me into social contact with lawyers. And I have yet to meet an attorney of any stripe who believed that Roe v Wade was good jurisprudence.

Over the last four decades, Roe v Wade has poisoned the American political waters like nothing else since Dred Scott, and there is every indication it will continue to do so in the future.

As the Doctor points out, the correct and appropriate role for judges in general, and for Justices of the Supreme Court in particular, is to interpret the law as written, without consideration of politics or persons. This is why we give them life appointments, to shield them from concerns about political or personal reprisals.

When they violate this sacred trust, they endanger the Republic. As someone observed after the high-handed ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on gay marriage, the Gettysburg Address referred to a government "for the people", not a government "of four people", no matter how well-educated, erudite, and richly berobed they may be.

“Ginsburg makes my skin crawl. The more you get to know these abortion-mongering bastards, the more amoral and reptilian they seem.”

The poor doctor is mad because this woman doesn’t think the state has any business forcing women to have babies, so she’s “reptilian”. Dehumanizing the enemy is a necessary step if you want normally gentle and peaceful people to become indifferent to less than humane treatment of their enemies, and facilitates violence against these “non-humans”.

Keep up the good work Doctor, with Catholics like you, I’m sure the priest shortage and church closings will continue.

Popeye, you should sign up for one of those "learn a new word every day" websites. Your vocabulary sucks. The word "reptilian", when applied to persons, means "despicable; contemptible", as in "reptilian behavior". (dictionary.com)

It's not "dehumanizing", so stop your childish, sissified hyperventilating with the "facilitates violence" crap. Who are you afraid of, anyway?

And speaking as a Catholic, I would rather have just 10 Catholics like Egnor in the world than a billion "Catholics" like that blattering ignoramus, Nancy Pelosi.

"Dehumanizing the enemy is a necessary step if you want normally gentle and peaceful people to become indifferent to less than humane treatment of their enemies, and facilitates violence against these “non-humans”.Kind of like using the word 'foetus' and 'terminate' to describe killing the unborn?

"Actually, some years ago the Church had just 11 Catholics, and it grew and prospered fairly well. "I am pretty sure those 11 fellows probably used the Greek (Kathalikos) term to describe the fledgeling church as 'universal' when speaking in that language (ie in Antioch etc). But, the modern term 'Catholic' that the troll is using is meant to target Roman Catholicism. I am pretty sure he is unaware of the actual meaning, or of the fact that there are Catholic denominations outside of the Roman Church. He seems to think the Roman Catholic church is shrinking, when in fact it is one of the fastest growing religions in the world.

Note that she made no assertion that Roe was rightly (or wrongly) decided, as a matter of law, which is the only matter that is any of her professional business. Is she admitting that Roe was a Constitutional joke, unfounded in any logic or law? Is she admitting that it was a tactical ruling, albeit imprudent?

No, she's accepting it as being such a well established precedent that she doesn't need to spend time going in to the underpinnings of the decision.

"The Christian idea of the world is that it originated in a very complicated process of evolution but that it nevertheless still comes in its depths from the Logos. It thus bears reason in itself."

Benedict XVI

"The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason; it comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love"

Benedict XVI

"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God."

Benedict XVI

"Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding."

Plato

"Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors"

Isaac Newton

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."Albert Einstein

"Egnorance: The Egotistical Combination of Ignorance and Arrogance" Burt Humburg

"Egnor [is] an interesting example of the religious pathology that's going to be afflicting us for probably the next century..." P.Z. Myers

"...so far Dr.Egnor seems not to grasp the folly of his situation." Steven Novella

"Michael Egnor is giving every sign of continuing the shenanigans that has already made him infamous in skeptical circles." Steven Novella

"Dr. Egnor has his own blog now. Hilarity ensues..."Orac

"Egnor probably always was an arrogant asshole, also when he was an athiest. Then he had a midlife crisis, found religion and he became an even bigger asshole."

Troy

"...it is simply impossible for me to continue to believe that the "Michael Egnor" articles are being written by a real person who really believes what he (or she) writes." Mike Dunford

"Michael Egnor comes back for another helping of whup ass..." P.Z. Myers

"Dr. Egnor's deviously clever plan to destroy Darwinism once and for all..." Orac

"Dr. Egnor regularly laid down flaming swaths of stupid ..." Orac

"...Dr. Egnor reaches a new low..." Mark C. Chu-Carroll

"Egnor's machine is uninhabited by any ghost..." P.Z. MyersSuddenly [Egnor] knows law better than lawyers, he knows biology better than biologists, he pretends to know everything better than people who have actually studied whatever it is that Egnor feels threatens his crazy religion. Troy

"This is not an excuse for Dr. Egnor's ignorance – he threw his hat into the ring, he deserves what he gets. He should have had the proper humility to stay out..."Steven Novella

"...that paragon of arrogant ignorance, Dr. Michael Egnor, is back at it again..." Mark C. Chu-Carroll

"...Michael Egnor just can't get enough of making himself look like an idiot..." Mark C. Chu-Carroll

"Dr. Michael Egnor: Neurosurgeon, Stony Brook Faculty, and all around Dishonest Twit...based on the level of intellectual integrity that he just demonstrated, he's not someone I would trust to train a dog, much less a doctor" Mike Dunford

"Two Things that Don't Go Together: Michael Egnor and Intellectual Integrity...Someone once pointed out that when a dog pisses on a fire hydrant, it's not committing an act of vandalism. It's just being a dog..." Mike Dunford